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In the face of a general strike called by Shiite militants in Baghdad’s northeastern Sadr City district, home to 2.5 million people, US troops ended their week-long siege of the district on October 31.
The US, Britain, Italy, France, Australia and Bahrain began two days of joint naval exercises in the Persian Gulf on October 31, including marine boardings of ships 32 kilometres from the Iranian coastline. Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Mohammad Ali Hosseini told reporters in Tehran: “We are watching their movements very carefully. We do not consider this exercise appropriate. US moves go in the direction of more adventurism, not of stability and security.”
Staff at the University of NSW mail room are the latest victims of the university’s cost-cutting and corporatisation. Mail services at UNSW including internal mail and courier services were put out to tender via an advertisement in the November 1 Sydney Morning Herald.
Many of the 2.6 million US soldiers who served in the Vietnam War have contracted cancer and a cocktail of serious health problems that they believe to be directly linked to their exposure to the dioxin-contaminated defoliant Agent Orange. The US military sprayed Agent Orange heavily in some parts of Vietnam for 10 years during the war.
NSW Greens MP Lee Rhiannon has called on the NSW Labor government to drop a current trial of taser stun guns after one of the weapons caused the death of a teenager in the United States on November 1. It is expected that the NSW government will announce before next March’s state election that stun guns will be given to 7000 NSW police on general duties.
Fadi Rahman from the Independent Centre for Research’s youth centre in Lidcombe, Sydney, spoke to Green Left Weekly’s Emma Clancy about the impact on young Muslim Australians of the media attack on the entire Islamic community in the wake of Sheikh Taj el-Din Al Hilaly’s comments about women and sexual assault.
How hard is it to raise $76,500 before the end of this year? Not hard at all for some organisations. As the November 1 Sydney Morning Herald reported: “Opposition Leader, Peter Debnam, took to the harbour last night for a fund-raising cruise with the property industry aboard a luxury cruiser owned by a developer, Greg Gav.
On October 30 primary and preschool teachers went back to the classrooms, ending seven weeks of strikes and actions, with their key demand of a 40% wage increase unmet. They will continue their campaign for wage justice with 24-hour strikes and education rallies on November 3 and 9.
Seventy people packed into the Resistance Centre on October 26 to hear author Antony Loewenstein and Green Left Weekly journalist Rupen Savoulian speak about Israel’s role in the Middle East. Loewenstein described the wide range of responses to his new book, My Israel Question, including much positive feedback from Jews who expressed their support for his critique of the Israeli state’s repressive policies in the region.
The women’s room, and the women’s, Indigenous and queer officer positions will not exist next year at the Bendigo campus of Latrobe University.
Large rallies were held around Australia on November 4 as part of an international day of action to protest government inaction on climate change. Organisers of the “Walk against warming” estimated that the number of people who participated was up to: 47,000 in Sydney, 30,000 in Melbourne, 5000 in Hobart, 3000 in Canberra and Perth, 1500 in Brisbane, 1000 in Adelaide and Wollongong, 800 in Newcastle and 300 in Cairns.
November 18 will be the second anniversary of the police killing of Mulrunji in Palm Island’s watchhouse. On that day, members of Queensland’s Aboriginal community and their supporters will rally in Brisbane to demand an end to Aboriginal deaths in custody.